Avra's God

by Ann Lee Miller

  Her eyes rounded in the half light.

  “I’ve had nothing but time to think since Denny’s. I know I hurt you when I sent you away. Give me another chance. Please.”

  She jerked her fingers from under his. “No, just no, Jesse. I’m moving to get away from you—” She clapped her hand over her mouth and jumped up.

  He grabbed her wrist. “You’re not going to run away from me again like you did on the beach. We’re going to talk this out. If your answer is still no, you can go back to Miami.”

  “Six months ago you didn’t like the way I dressed, that I tried to read your mind. I was too whacked for you.” She brushed angry tears away with her palms. “It half killed me to cut you out of my heart, but I did it.” She glanced at his hand around her wrist. “You can let go of me now. I won’t leave until you hear everything that’s on my mind.”

  Jesse loosened his fingers. “Is that a threat or a promise?” He grinned wryly and scooted closer to her.

  Kallie gave him a black look. Behind her, empty seats clawed dark fingers into the empty hulk of the room. “So, what are you—slumming? All the really cool girls get guys this week?”

  “Ever since Denny’s, you were all I could think about. But I had to wait till I was sure.”

  Kallie’s eyes focused on the floor where their graduation chairs had been, her face void of expression.

  “Look at me.”

  Finally, she turned her face toward him.

  “I love you.” His fingers curled around the edge of the bench. “I’ve always loved you.”

  Her eyes opened wider; her breath caught. “I loved you more.”

  “Okay, so now we’re in third grade?” Joy rippled through him.

  A laugh squeaked out of Kallie.

  His eyes bore into hers. “You never let me in. I came as close as you let me. Why did you hold me off?”

  “You were headed for rock god.”

  “You were afraid of me because of my music? And why did I spend four years of my life and try on three majors at Daytona State?”

  “Don’t make me sound like an idiot. You’ve got the songs, the pipes, and the chemistry with the crowd. You work hard, and people follow you. There’s no reason why your dream can’t come true.”

  “Maybe it was just a dream like every kid wants to be a major league pitcher.”

  “Every kid doesn’t have the ability to be a major league pitcher. I can’t believe you aren’t serious about rock god. It’s your passion.”

  “Was. I played with Chris Zigler’s band most of this year.”

  “Backup vocals and guitar. I heard.”

  “It killed the dream. I found out that I don’t like hanging with people I barely know. I like New Smyrna Beach,” Jesse said. “I can’t write music and travel. No quiet. No opportunity to refill the well. Rock god was fun—”

  “I noticed.”

  “But after a while, I just wanted somebody who knew me.”

  A puff of air conditioning moved past them.

  Kallie shivered and tucked her hands inside the sleeves of her gown.

  He pulled her close.

  “I’m not going to stay, Jesse. Don’t get your hopes up.”

  “Just keeping you warm. Hey, let me sing you a song I wrote.”

  “No. You’re not going to melt my heart again.”

  “Come on, Kal.” Jesse nuzzled his nose in her hair and breathed deeply. “Mmm.” Another breath. “Did I ever tell you that you smell like summer rain?” He didn’t move away. “Let me kiss you.”

  Kallie leaned into him for a fraction of a second and stood. “I read Josh Harris’s book—no kissing till there’s a wedding.”

  “Extreme circumstances call for extreme measures.”

  “If the last kiss you gave me was any indication, I don’t think your kisses are going to persuade me.”

  “You’re killing me.” He grabbed his heart. “That was my first kiss.”

  “You were twenty! You’re kidding, right?” Her expression softened. “You’re melting my heart anyway.”

  He dropped his arm around her shoulders and led her toward the exit. “You’ll change your mind about Miami.”

  They waved at a maintenance man and pushed through the glass doors into the sultry night.

  “Same old cocky Jesse.”

  As he let Kallie into the car, he caught a flash of her ankle and sandaled foot in the parking lot light, the only part of her not draped in black. Hello. He’d win this war.

  Light poured through the windshield, leaving their faces in shadow. “Promise me you’ll think about us,” he said.

  “I don’t want to.”

  He cranked the key in the ignition. “What if we’re supposed to be together?”

  “I’m too tired to think. If I say I’ll consider it, will you take me home?”

  “You don’t want to go to the party?”

  “I’ll think about—us. Now, take me home.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  Jesse pulled into Kallie’s driveway and turned off the engine, the house dark—her mother and Aly probably long asleep—crickets chirping in the quiet. Jesse reached for the roses wrapped in green tissue in the backseat and laid them in Kallie’s lap.

  She picked them up and buried her nose in the blooms. “You planned tonight, didn’t you? I thought it just happened.”

  “I love you, Kal. I’m serious now. I’m going to win you. Think about it. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He came around and let her out of the car. He walked her to the door with his hand pressed against her back. He slipped his fingers around the nape of her neck and pulled her toward him, kissing her forehead.

  She looked at him with soft, dazed eyes. “Bye, Jess.”

  In the morning, Kallie held her breath and waited for Avra to pick up the phone. The sound of Avra’s voice broke her dam of tears.

  “Sorry,” she said between sobs, “I haven’t cried yet—since Jesse—told me—he loved me ... Not happy tears. I’m mad.”

  The sweet smell of the roses Jesse had given her wafted up from the trashcan where she’d thrown them, blooms down. She shut the can outside the kitchen door, narrating as she went. Aly watched with large eyes.

  What was making her mad? “Jesse. Everything. Wrecking my peace. I was over him ... When he fell in love, it was with Tia, not me. What is he even thinking—coming back to me after “Neon Green”? And, in Denny’s, he told me I wasn’t in his future.”

  She listened to Avra, sniffing intermittently.

  “You make it sound too simple. Don’t feed me logic.” She paced back and forth across the kitchen. “Jesse just threw in a car bomb, and I’m going to blow.”

  Chapter 33

  Jesse heard his heart beating in the ear he pressed against the phone. “Kallie?” He thought there was a breath, but he could have imagined it. The phone clicked, disconnecting, and he spiraled into Kallie’s silence—three days’ worth. He’d had it with her shutting him out. He’d catch her at the end of her shift at the Beacon.

  Two hours later he jammed his hands into the pockets of his shorts and glanced at his reflection in the restaurant window. He threw his shoulders back. No need for Kallie to know he’d convinced himself she was over him in the fifteen minutes since the last customer exited.

  Kallie pushed through the glass front doors. Her purse sagged from her shoulder.

  He eyed the splotches on her apron before she reached behind her and untied it. “Kallie.”

  She blanched. “How did you know where to find me?”

  “Aly told me you switched to breakfast-lunch shift since graduation. At least she likes me.” He squinted at her in the afternoon sun. “Could we talk?” His breath came quick and shallow. His hand clenched around his keys in his pocket.

  “Might as well get it over with.”

  The air pressed out of his lungs. He walked down Flagler Avenue toward the beach, the sidewalk feeling too small for the both of them. Kallie bunched her apron in one hand.
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br />   “Get what over with?” He cringed at the tightness in his voice.

  “Mom always told me the kindest thing was to tell a guy when there was no hope. I’m not going out with you, Jess.”

  He heard the hard edge in her voice. Nothing kind about it. “Don’t do this to me.”

  Kallie shrugged as though she could care less how he felt. She stared out across the sugary sand at the sun glinting off the waves.

  “Kallie.” Jesse waited for her to look at him. “I’m more stubborn than you are. I’m going to fight for you.”

  She pursed her lips. Palm fronds tossed overhead, splashing them with sun and shade. Kallie pulled her ponytail up from where it stuck to the sweat on her neck. “Whatever.” She dropped her hair down her back.

  “That was cold,” he said to her back.

  She walked a few steps toward the Beacon, then turned back. “Don’t bother fighting for me. The war’s over.” She turned away. “Have a nice life, Jesse” floated back to him.

  He stared at the sidewalk, listening to Kallie’s sneakers grind sand against the concrete as she retreated. Sun baked his scalp and the dark shoulders of his T-shirt. Sweat and shock ran down his chest. His breathing shallowed as if a three-hundred-pound anvil crushed his chest. Kallie moving away. Gone.

  He almost thought she wanted to wound him as deeply as possible. He’d never seen her cruel like this. Even when she dated Zack, he’d glimpsed her softness toward him. He’d barely launched his strategy to win her and she’d shut him down cold. No avenue for appeal. No hope.

  He gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles as he drove toward the woods he and Cisco roamed as boys.

  The forest had grown dense in his absence. He forged his way toward the creek where he and Cisco spent half their lives. He stopped at the water and lifted his chin toward the white on blue of the sky. Why did You tease me with Kallie and jerk her away? I did the right thing protecting her at Denny’s, and You know it. What do You want from me? Misery? He slammed through the spindly trees beside the stream.

  At last he stopped, his anger stomped flat in the woods under his mud-caked flip-flops. He kicked the pine needles away that he’d dug up with his foot. Sitting down, he rubbed a broken beer bottle against a fresh mosquito bite.

  The war is over, she’d said. They were over. Since he met her, Kallie had hovered just beyond his consciousness as his future. Why was it so clear, now that she refused to be his future?

  “Where are You God?” he shouted, his voice hollow like the emptiness in his gut. “I’m sick of Your silence. I used to think You were way harsh. Now I know it.”

  Even before all the words were out of his mouth, he heard in his spirit, I heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds. How much of the Bible was etched on the hard drive of his mind? His eyes flicked over the scratches on his arms and legs, their sting obliterated by the searing pain inside.

  “Heal away. Bind up my wounds,” he dared God. He laughed mirthlessly. He couldn’t imagine healing. Just stop the pain. He thought of the whiteness of the snow he’d once seen, an abundance of nothing, and craved it. In a flash he understood Cisco’s dive into pain-numbing chemicals.

  He leaned back on the pine needle floor, head cupped in his hands. Sun filtered through the branches. He smelled pine and sweat. Invisible jays twittered. Maybe he drifted into sleep, he wasn’t sure. But God peeled back his skin and showed him his soul.

  As a kid, he’d bumbled along, holding onto God’s hand. Somewhere along the way, he dropped that hand to grasp at things he wanted—basketball, girls, fame. His bitterness at Dad had settled into a grudge against God.

  A holy wind had blown away the bitterness the day it swept through his dad’s office, destroying the barrier between him and God. Now, Kallie shoved him closer still. He could almost hear God’s door swinging back and forth on its hinges.

  “What do You want from me?”

  I surrender all. The melody winged through his head, unearthed from a hundred altar calls.

  He stumbled onto a game path. Everything was gone. Beach Rats, Zig’s band, the bobbleheads. Even the rock-god dream. Kallie—the loss that knifed him to the core. What was left to surrender but the music that ran through his veins with his blood? What had music gotten him?

  “I have nowhere to go but to You.” He fell on his knees on the narrow path. “I choose You.” The sound of his own voice speaking to God was an echo of his past and his future.

  “Kallie!” The one-word prayer wrenched from his gut.

  Jesse stayed on his knees, looking up through a window in the pines at the blue, blue sky. Silence. But he didn’t feel alone.

  He stood and fought his way through the waist-high grasses to the creek. Sweat ran down the side of his face and he wiped it away. He felt oddly free. Nothing was resolved, but the outcome was God’s. He bent at the stream and splashed water over his face and head. Cool rivulets ran down his chest and back under his T-shirt.

  He couldn’t explain it. The music winged into his mind when he lifted his head from the creek, words of praise to God. He sang full voice in the woods, filled with wonder.

  He opened the trunk and reached for his guitar. His heart tripped over his annihilated hope of singing “Come Walk With Me” to Kallie. He slammed the hood and sat on it till the pain ebbed.

  His fingers searched for the chords until the melody he heard matched the one beating in his heart. The song came from God—and the song rocked.

  He played it again, his voice soaring to the treetops, “Reachin’ and grabbin’, my hands fall down empty. I hold them up to you ... I love you. I choose you ...”

  Isaiah 55:12 ran through his mind: “For you will go out with joy, and be led forth with peace ... and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” His chest and his heart beneath it were sore, as if he’d been pummeled, but his soul breathed again.

  Avra did a double take when she walked by the window to the church playground. Cisco rolled in the grass with four-year-old Johnny Ashton. Over and over they tumbled. Johnny giggled with delight. Her finger wedged into her Bible, keeping the place of the verse that had driven her out of Sunday school in search of Cisco.

  Soon, three other boys clamored for a horsey ride. Avra watched the pantomime—the delight on Cisco’s face, the grass caught in his hair. After thirty seconds the “horse” gave out under the weight of four little boys. The boys were mesmerized. So was she.

  Psalm 128:4 burned under her finger. Stand in awe of God’s yes. Oh, how He blesses the one who fears God.

  Framed in the window was the father of her children.

  As they rolled and tumbled off him, Cisco smiled and glanced up, catching Avra in the window. His gaze locked on hers, his brows raised in question.

  Yes! She nodded to him through the glass.

  He shouted something to the other teacher and high-jumped the kiddy yard fence.

  She laughed and ran to meet him at the playground door.

  “Did that nod mean what I think it meant?” Cisco stood, breathing hard. “That you’ll be my girl?”

  “Yes.” His warm, chapped lips were on hers, his arms squeezed her to him. Her fingers clung to his ribs. She breathed in sweat, grass, and heaven. Behind him, angels talked.

  “Yuck. Kissing.”

  “I like my mommy’s kisses.”

  “Mommies give itty bitty kisses.”

  “Mommies don’t give kisses like that. Yuck.”

  “Do too.”

  “Do not.”

  “They give them to daddies.”

  Laughter bubbled up between Avra and Cisco, breaking them apart. Heat burned her face as they turned toward their short audience.

  Cisco kept his arm gripped tightly around her. He shook his finger at the pregnant teacher standing next to the slide. “I’ll get you for this.”

  “Oh, did the gate slip open?” she said, all innocence. “Okay, kids, they lived happily ever after. Come in for snacks!”

  Kallie wadde
d her taco wrapper and tossed it onto the tray in front of Cisco and Avra. What if it were she and Jesse sitting there radiating happiness like a couple of Christmas trees?

  Cisco scraped his chair back. “I’m outta here—shoot some hoops with—” He stopped himself.

  Kallie quirked an eyebrow. “Consorting with the enemy, huh?”

  “Come on, Kal,” Cisco said, “The guy loves you. Work it out.”

  “Okay, okay.” Kallie gave him a syrupy smile. “I’m not making you two choose sides. Kick his butt for me.”

  “I can do that.” He grinned and bent to kiss Avra—a little longer than necessary. Jealousy flashed through Kallie.

  Avra’s eyes followed Cisco out the glass doors. “You could have that too.” She shifted her gaze to Kallie.

  “What? Are you reading my mind?”

  Avra shoved away the orange tray and leaned on her elbows. “What do you think this anger is all about?”

  “That I’m still whacked?”

  “You need to forgive Jesse. Decide what still hurts when you probe it.”

  “Should be easy. I spit it all out to you on the phone the other day.”

  “Tell Jesse each thing that he did or said and how you felt about it. Let him tell his side.”

  “You mean talk to him?” Kallie frowned. “I already told him to get a life!”

  Avra brushed the crumbs from the table onto the tray.

  “You’re right. I feel it in here.” Kallie tapped her heart. “How did you get to be so smart?”

  “Lived it.”

  Kallie dropped their garbage into the nearby bin. “Thanks.” She waved, her mind already on Jesse’s sins.

  After a long walk along the river, ranting Jesse’s offenses to God, Kallie stopped by the shed for her Skechers’ box. As she headed home, she steeled herself to read “Neon Green’s” lyrics one last time. She slumped onto the back step and stared at the yard jungle. A breath filled her lungs, and she let it go.